The objective of this research is to enable the adoption of network coding, a promising new network paradigm, in practical communication networks by overcoming its vulnerability to errors. The proposed approach is a complexity driven integrated framework that harnesses the intricate relation between algorithms, their complexities, and their hardware implementations.
Intellectual merit: The proposed research focuses on algebraic universal error control for network coding, which is essential to ensuring the maximum throughput of network coding in the presence of errors. Existing error control schemes suffer from inferior performance, unrealistically high complexities, and inefficient hardware implementations. Jointly addressing these interplaying challenges, the proposed research is the first comprehensive investigation of network coding with error control from the perspective of complexity and hardware implementation. The proposed research will result in new error control schemes that not only achieve superior performance, but also have low complexities and efficient hardware implementations.
Broader impacts: The proposed error control schemes for network coding will overcome its vulnerability to errors, and have low complexities and efficient hardware implementations. Both factors enable the adoption of network coding in practical communication networks. The integrated design methodology, techniques, and results of the proposed research can be extrapolated to the implementation of other advanced algorithms, and hence impact a wide range of communication and signal processing systems. The integrated educational program attempts to strengthen and to diversify our science and engineering workforce, as well as to bridge the gap between advanced signal processing algorithms and their efficient implementations, thus helping to maintain our nation?s technological advantage.
